There is a suburb in the North-west of Sydney called Eastwood. It is where I was raised for the first eight years of my life. We started to move around a bit after that as divorcing families do, and I think the act of moving as a child and teenager made me feel like no where was home, not in the way I had remembered Eastwood. My childhood memories are fragmentary at best, but I have since come to love the suburb as a kind of pseudo-connection to a heritage I know little about.
Eastwood, from then to now.
Eastwood is now known as a melting pot of Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong, South Korean and Southeast Asian food cultures.
The land was originally occupied by the Wallumedegal Aboriginal peoples, who occupied the land between the Lane Cove and Parramatta rivers. They made up part of the Dharug people and called their country Wallumetta. British colonisation and occupation started in the area in 1792, and it finally became Eastwood around 1887, when the railway station was named after a local estate.
After colonization, the first immigration boom was in the postwar era, with migrants from Italy and Greece moving into the area in the 40s and 50s.
Eastwood is also famous for its Granny Smith Festival, which celebrates Maria Ann Smith and the development of the bright green Granny Smith apple. Maria and her husband grew the apples on their property in 1858, and recognising their qualities for cooking and eating, they further developed them in orchards around Eastwood. She and the apple are celebrated each October at the lively Granny Smith Festival.
My Eastwood
The idea of a hometown feels strange to me in many ways. My home is Sydney, and having lived in various suburbs in Sydney, each with unique flavours but many commonalities, it feels odd to specify further into a singular suburb. Yet, as I get older and my sense of self strengthens, I can feel how the tendrils of that experience in the first place I lived on this earth reach through the years to affect me now.
I came into this world in 1988. Eastwood was already becoming a melting pot of cultures. The 1990s saw a huge uptick in migrants from Hong Kong, China, South Korea, and other Southeast Asian countries. McDonald’s and KFC both closed, making way for Asian grocers, Thai Pho shops, and Taiwanese Boba tea.
We lived in a brick house that overlooked a valley of trees. My room looked out into the front yard, which was fenced in with white pipe fencing. Occasionally, a steam engine would roll through the valley on a scenic journey, and the puffs of smoke could be seen from our balcony. Lorikeets would swarm on weekends when we'd feed them bread with honey. In hindsight, it was the worst thing we could feed wild birds, but the feeling of them nibbling the bread out of my hand while they queued up my soft, fleshy arms has stayed with me as something magical.
To be perfectly honest, my childhood memories of Eastwood mostly revolve around the school playground and the backyard of my childhood home. It has only been since returning to the area as an adult that my memories of the suburb and communal spaces have morphed into nostalgia.
I moved to an adjacent suburb in 2021. It is a small townhouse big enough for me, hubby and the dog. It’s a leafy area, despite being penned in on one side by a motorway, and there’s plenty of conveniences around, one of which is the smorgasbord of Eastwood.
My hubby has lived near Eastwood his whole life, too, and the triangle between Macquarie Shopping Centre, Eastwood Shopping Centre, and Top Ryde Shopping Centre was his world growing up. I went to university at Macquarie, and when I finally returned as a ‘mature-aged’ student (at 21 years old), the whole area was familiar and comforting.
But especially Eastwood.
It is a bit like a time capsule. The shops have all changed since I was a kid, and even long-standing institutions eventually gave way to fancier versions of themselves. However, the architecture and the actual buildings have remained largely unchanged since the 1980s. Some still have their historic frontage from the 30s and 40s. The Masonic Hall still stands. It was once where my school held its end-of-year showcase, but now it is an impromptu electronics store.
The shopping centre still has a Woolworth's with the old logo and signage from the 80s. The brick-paved plaza is still a hazard in the rain, especially if you wear sneakers. When I was little, the arboretum was built, a huge metal arch structure that was mostly bare. The thick vines of the wisteria growing up on the sides were leathery as I tried to climb it, believing that if I were left alone long enough, I would certainly make the top. But now, the wisteria has grown up, creating a beautiful canopy that blooms in spring and is verdant and cooling in summer.
The roads wind around, and the street we used to live on still has a contrarian traffic flow, which means that traffic crosses the wrong side of the road to make it up the one-way path around the circuit. Apparently, cars weren’t powerful enough to make it up the hill when the road was first built. I wonder if it will ever change to a more logical flow.
The Eastwood Fountain is the centrepiece of nostalgia. It's been there as long as I’ve known Eastwood, and while it used to run constantly, nowadays, it's a good day to see the arcs of water flowing. It's still a popular play spot for children, too. There is something inherently fascinating about water flowing over rocky surfaces.
There is a corner of the internet where memes are made about being blessed by the Eastwood Fountain. I certainly dunked myself in it (mostly unintentionally) as a small child. It's one of my mum's favourite stories to tell whenever we go to Eastwood: me splashing barefoot on the stony tiles and the imminent over-balancing with short limbs and a round nappy-covered bottom. An old Chinese gentleman laughed and said, 'I saw that coming.' Mum laughed as she replied that she was always prepared with a towel and a change of clothes.
It's one of those memories that probably happened often enough that it never actually happened just like that—but that's kind of how stories work sometimes, especially the stories we tell ourselves.
The one change in the architecture is the space left by a building that burned down in 2011—it lay vacant for some time while investigations and the fallout from the tragedy of the fire continued, but it has since been converted into a Taiwanese Food Market. Food stalls line the sides, with seating in the middle covered in a marquee. It’s delightful on a mild night, with overhead string lights, smells and sounds of busy kitchens, and families of all sorts enjoying the easy and delicious meal.
There is certainly something about memory and identity to be grappled with in all this too.
Being Halfie
Growing up, I looked Asian, at least enough to be marked out as different to my majority-white classmates. I’m half Chinese, but because my mum was adopted from Hong Kong into a white New Zealand family, we have no language or familial connection to China or Hong Kong. So, while I am half Chinese, it is a difficult part of my identity to embrace because there isn’t a huge amount of emotional or cultural connection there.
However, I still experienced the racism of being half-Chinese. So, as I grew, I grappled with the roller coaster of defending my identity and suppressing it.
For many years, as I came to understand I was being picked on for being different, I suppressed my Asian-ness. I would try to push the fact that I was born here and had only ever lived in Australia as some kind of defence. I would join in the judgement of ‘weird Asian habits’ with my friends, but deep down, I knew that I was selling myself out to fit in.
But then we moved again, and I changed schools. I found a circle of friends that included other Chinese girls. They would laugh at me (in a good-natured way, but tween friendships are rough) that my family didn’t wash our rice before using the rice cooker. My mum had never been taught to rinse her rice before cooking it, and our stir-fry sauce came from Woolies, not the Asian grocer. I couldn’t figure out if I resented my Asian friends or if I was jealous of them. Their identity seemed so much neater than mine.
I came to realise that my conflicted identity was something I shared with my mother but experienced in a much different way. She was born in Hong Kong, and the ache of being abandoned and orphaned is ingrained deep in her being. So, she holds tightly to that identity. Within it are layers of reverent love for Hong Kong and Chinese people and culture. Yet she holds equally strongly to her Australian identity, the country that granted her citizenship, opportunity, and a home. A home where she could raise a child.
A home that was becoming a multicultural hub. Eastwood was where we could blend in and be Asian Australians. For a long time, I would listen to mum reminisce about our time in Eastwood, it was bound up with so many good memories, made even more radiant for her by the disintegration of our family afterwards. As an angry and hurt teen, I couldn’t see the appeal for a long time. It seemed to be a time that was locked away for me and overshadowed by everything that came after.
Coming Home
Eastwood has become an important place for me, partly because of my nostalgia and partly because of my proximity to it in my adult life.
I am better connected to my history, and the shadows of trauma are less heavy, so I am able to experience nostalgia and joy for the time that passed. Therapy is a wonderful thing.
But Eastwood has also changed.
While I was away, growing up, and learning about other parts of Sydney and the world, Eastwood was also growing.
The streets are still paved with bricks that rise and fall like a beast breathing. If you go at the wrong time, parking is nearly impossible. Also, the quality of parking is questionable. Another favoured meme topic on the internet. The fountain only works sometimes, and the shopping centre still has the oldest escalator I know of. But it has acquired a charm, along with its community.
Humans of Eastwood is a community page that started as something of an inside joke but has evolved into a genuine community hub—still with plenty of self-deprecating humour, though. Events and markets are commonplace now, and the Lunar New Year celebrations are amazing.
Then there is the food. Food is an expression of love and culture in a form that just about everyone can enjoy (not my hubby; he’s allergic to shellfish). Even without being raised in an Asian household, Asian food is such a source of comfort.
Also, some of the eateries in Eastwood stay open properly late, and when I would frequent the gaming/internet cafe down the road, a late-night feed at Ginger and Shallots was the most amazing way to finish off a weekend.
Having a community so close that offers such a variety of food makes me feel like I will always be coming home to Eastwood.
But not only that, Eastwood has become something of a symbol of my identity for me. It takes influence from all across Asia and brings the best bits of those cultures here to be shared. But it is a proudly Australian place too, and it doesn’t take shit from anyone else. As long as you welcome and embrace Eastwood, Eastwood will welcome and embrace you.
This has been a rambling ode to a hometown that I have only recently come to hold so dear, and I hope the path has been interesting for you.
Until next time,
Sheri
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